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A unique tasting of Kosherwine.com exclusive wines – nice options that range outside of my QPR because of their small production
As always, I am happy to taste wines that are sent to me or that I buy, I do not normally call them out, per se, unless they are at a tasting, like with Royal, IDS, M&M, and others. This is one of those examples, where Kosherwine.com (KW) sent me 24 wines to taste. I have also added some that I bought, exclusive to KW, the Slight of Hand, and Doubleback wines. There were also, the Harkham wines that KW started to bring in, I also bought those, but I just have not had the time to taste those yet. I remember well my time in Australia when I was one of the first people to post about the incredible Harkham Azziza Shiraz! WOW! So much fun! Even more enjoyable was hanging out with Richie at the tasting in L.A., I truly hope KW will start to import the Semillon as well soon!
Kosherwine.com’s Exclusive wines
I have spoken about exclusive wines, exclusive wine clubs, and the sort in the past. While I have no issue with them, per se, they do tend to drive up pricing. They do not drive up the price because the exclusive merchant makes a bigger cut, the prices go up because of smaller production and exclusivity.
When you make lots of small wine runs or work with small producers that are OK with exclusivity, it tends to lead to higher prices because of how the product is made. Whether it is wineries in Israel like Shiran, Ghito, Mia Luce, or Slight of Hand from Washington State. They are all small wineries with small productions or one-off runs and that leads to higher prices.
In the end, the way I define QPR (Quality to Price Ratio), still revolves around price! So, whether the price is higher because of small production, single runs, or exclusivity, the end goal for QPR is to get a wine that meets the quality and the price of its competitors.
You will see some nice wines below, wines that I would drink, but given the pricing, I could not put the QPR WINNER tag on them. Nonetheless, if you remove the exclusive thing and just stick to the fact that these are a bunch of wines that are nice to well, Israeli reds, the tasting was fun! In the end, that is what matters.
Fun Options
Top Scoring wines
If I was a betting man, and I am not, I would wager that most people will find the Ghito whites to be highly enjoyable. I only had two of them to taste the Uphaz and the Soreqa, but I may well get some other 2021 whites to try.
The Mia Luce white was also quite enjoyable, along with the Yaacov Oryah Chardonnay.
For red wines, the Doublback was quite nice, it had green notes that threw me but overall a very nice wine.
Seven 90 or 90+ scored wines
There were also seven 90 or 90+ scored wines. These included another Ghito white, the Shiran Chardonnay, Mia Luce Syrah, a pair of Domaine Herzberg red blends, along with a Sheldrake sweet wine, and the 2019 Slight of Hand Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, Magic.
Closing Thoughts
Overall not a bad lineup of good wines, the prices, as described above keep the QPR scores lower than I would have liked. Still, there are options here for those that want to try new wines, new blends, or unique stories. In the end, KW has done its homework, I hope that as they work on the overall product line, they can maybe also work with their partners to get the prices down.
My sincerest thanks to Dovid Riven for sharing their wonderful wines with me. The wines are listed in the order I tasted them. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:

2021 Festa d’Estate Pinot Grigio, Provinicia di Pavia (M) – Score: 87 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose of this wine is correct with green grass, straw, quince, yellow apple, and herbs. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine feels stunted, less vibrant than it should be, the apple is bruised, the pear is browning, the fruit is not crisp, and a bit sweet, and there is good acidity, but it is just not refreshing, with some citrus, and herb. The finish is long, balanced, and with good acidity. Drink now. (tasted March 2023) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 12%)
2021 Shiran Winery Chardonnay, Gush Etzion – Score: 90 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose of this wine is the best part of this wine with some muted fruit, not as crisp as I would hope, apple blossom, muddled red apple, muddled pear, and flint. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine feels all over the place, it has acidity but feels hollow in the middle, with red apple, pear, some citrus, and flint. The finish is long, not as refreshing as it should be as the muddled fruit detracts from the overall effect. Drink now. (tasted March 2023) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 13%)
2020 Yaffo Image White, Judean Hills – Score: 88 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose of this wine feels muted with more muddled apple and pear, peach, some smoke, and flint. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is balanced, it feels almost refreshing, with good acidity, but the fruit is where things take a step back, the muddled peach, pear, and apple, are nice enough, but what I want is crisp and refreshingly tart fruit and I feel this is a bit lacking there. The finish is long, balanced, and fruity, with pith, flint, and some smoke. Drink now. (tasted March 2023) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 12%)
2020 Mia Luce Blanc, Galilee – Score: 91 (QPR: EVEN)
The 2020 vintage in Israel was tough, this wine has fresh fruit, the issue is there is very little of it, which is shocking for me to say about an Israeli wine! The nose of this wine is fresh and bright with tart green apples, flint, hay, funk, tart pink quince, and peach. The mouth of this medium-plus-bodied wine has a lovely weight, even a bit elegant, with refreshing and fresh fruit, and lovely acidity, I wish there was more fruit, with peach, yellow apple, quince, nice funk, and lovely flint. The finish is long, refreshing, and almost oily, with nice acidity, and some elegance. Drink by 2024. (tasted March 2023) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 12%)
2021 Yaacov Oryah Chardonnay, Singe Vineyard, Yaacov’s Playground, Judean Hills – Score: 91(QPR: EVEN)
This wine is a bit closed to start it needs a few hours to fully open up. The nose of this wine is fresh and refreshing with good apple, pear, grapefruit, citrus blossom, a hint of wood, and tart pink quince. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine has lovely acidity, with a lovely mouthfeel, good citrus, quince, lemon/lime, and a nice mouthfeel, crème Fraiche, sweet oak, and nicely refreshing! The finish is long, tart, and refreshing with loads of citrus, oak, and sweet spices lingering long. Drink until 2026. (tasted March 2023) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 12%)
The 2019 Kosher rose season is open but I am underwhelmed at best
It is not yet summer and here in NorCal, it feels more like winter with these strange May storms with thunder and hail. Sorry, but in NorCal, we do not get thunder, it is very strange indeed! Anyway, enough with my meteorologist fanboy moment, the weather was not conducive for my last tasting here in San Jose with a group of folks, but Rose was on the docket so rose it was.
Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!
Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 60+ kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 10 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?
Also, I want to bring up a topic I rarely talk about – price! Yeah, I hear you, Avi Davidowitz, of KosherWineUnfiltered, please quiet down, gloating does not suit you – (smiley face inserted here). The prices of Rose wines have gotten out of control. QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) has become nonexistent, essentially here in the USA, for the kosher rose market. Finally, I am sorry, but I really feel that wineries were either horribly hampered in some way with the 2018 rose vintage, or honestly, they just threw in the towel, The 2018 vintage is the worst one in the last 10 years. We have hit Peak Rose, we really have. Peak X is when X becomes so default within the construct of our lives, and the quality and quantity of X peaks. Clearly, calling peak kosher rose is a subjective call, but look around. The roses of 2018 feel commodity at best, they feel rushed, no real care, rhyme, or reason. They feel like we have peaked. They are nowhere near 2017, and 2017 was nowhere near 2016, and so on. I am sure next year may be another peak rose, and to be honest, many have called for Peak Oil and Peak TV, so maybe I am just projecting what I see around me, but this year’s crop of roses feel half-hearted pure cash cows, and really without love behind them.
As always, I will be chastised for my opinions, my pronouncements, and I am fine with that. This is wakeup post, there may be ONE or two roses I would buy, but respectfully, given the prices, I would rather buy, the 2018 Covenant Sauvignon Blanc, 2017 O’dwyers Sauvignon Blanc, the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, and so on. Throw in the 2018 Tabor Sauvignon Blanc and the 2018 Or Haganuz Amuka Blanc Blend, and really who cares about a rose?
I was thinking about going with the title: 2018 kosher roses, thanks, but who cares? Because that is how I feel. This vintage is a massive letdown, prices are too high, quality has hit rock bottom, and overall professionalism, IMHO, has gone along with the quality. Wineries have been getting away with less and less quality for years, raising prices, and this is the worst I have seen in the rose market overall. So, yeah, who cares?
Wine Color
What is rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit. Read the rest of this entry
2017 Herzog Rose of Pinot Noir, Tasting Room Reserve, Clarksburg
When I was in Oxnard, tailing along with Gabriel Geller to taste the new wines from Herzog Winery, late in 2017 (a couple of months after the harvest), we met with Joe Hurliman and Joe Herzog. As they were showing us around, I saw my old friend Josh Goodman standing next to a barrel. Josh used to live in San Jose, CA early in his career with Herzog, when the winery was situated in San Martin, CA.
Herzog Cellars started in 1985 and it was located in the old San Martin Winery. Josh and Jordana were members of our shul for close to two years. It was heady years in those days, lots of young and hip folks. Wine and food was center of what was our shul at that time, and it was fun hanging with Josh in those days.
Sadly, in 1998, Herzog moved the winery to CWS in Santa Maria, and they hired the now head winemaker, Joe Hurliman. I would see Josh every year at either the IFWF or the KFWE first in Los Angeles, in varied locations.
Josh was hovering over that barrel and its contents, like a mother hen over its fledglings, and personally, I saw that love in the wine. It was a Rose from Pinot Noir, and Joe and Josh would continue to perfect that wine until it was worthy of the tasting room reserve label.
I really enjoyed the wine, I must say and it showed quite well for me. The weight and the oak were clearly perceived, but they were in balance and control, and I found those characteristics to be more enjoyable than I would have expected in a rose.
Clearly, this is not a quaffing rose, it is more an appetizer rose, and one that can be enjoyed with a slightly larger range of food options.
Bravo to Josh and the Herzog winery. In my opinion, and in regards to my notes, this is ts best rose from Herzog for me this year.
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2017 Herzog Rose, Pinot Noir, Tasting Room Reserve, Clarksburg – Score: 90
This wine is fun, it has done so much right with things that could go so wrong. Sadly, I have been asked to taste horrible oak driven roses, or acid-free disasters, or dark roses that make me wonder why the word rose is on the bottle.
This wine has so many things that may make me wonder if I was being punished yet again, but thankfully this wine is truly fun, yes it has oak, but in lovely control, followed by a darker than normal color for a rose but hey not everyone loves Gris, finally the wine is well balanced with fruit, and it is not a tropical fruit bomb – bravo!
The nose on this wine shows lovely smoky oak notes, with lemongrass, ripe strawberry, with hints of passion fruit, and lovely summer fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is really fun, it shows a great acid core, followed by more oak, nice salinity, pink grapefruit, that gives way to flint, smoke, and green notes. The finish is long, sweet, with hints of oak, rich vanilla, and lovely tart fruit that lingers long, with flint. Lovely – Bravo! Drink Now.
The 2018 Kosher rose season is open – part 3
Well, after the first post I stated that I would be doing this rose wine post a few times. The subsequent posts would have the original content, and the newly revised or added rose wines as well. Well, this is part 3, and I hope this is the last one! My schedule was insane, but it is now slowing down, thankfully, so I hope to be adding more posts as well!
It is still officially Summer, which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!
Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?
Wine Color
What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.
White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.
The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).
Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.
The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature. Read the rest of this entry
The 2018 Kosher rose season is open – part 2
Well, after the first post I stated that I would be doing this rose wine post a few times. The subsequent posts would have the original content, and the newly revised or added rose wines as well. Well, this is part 2, and there will be at least a part 3 or maybe a part 4, such is life. My schedule is insane right now (not complaining in any way), so when I can grab a few moments to update the roses I have had, I take it with both hands!
It is still officially Spring, which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!
Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?
Wine Color
What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.
White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.
The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).
Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.
The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature. Read the rest of this entry
The 2018 Kosher rose season is open
It is officially Spring (though it snowed in Chicago for Passover – so I will hold judgment on that fact for a bit), which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!
Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?
Wine Color
What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes squeeze them and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.
White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.
The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).
Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.
The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature. Read the rest of this entry